Equal Opportunities Plan
The Equal Opportunities Plan is the 5-year-plan for strategies and activities on equal opportunities. The term of the current plan is 2019 to 2023. First, it presents the structures of the university that are responsible for implementing gender equality, family issues and diversity. Furthermore, the measures implemented in the previous planning period 2014 to 2018 and the development of the proportion of women are reported. For all qualification levels, professorships and committees, goals for the proportion of women are defined, both at university and at departmental level. Each of the 13 departments reports the developments, goals for the proportion of women and planned key measures. In the last part, the strategies with the respective measures are presented.
The Senate and the University Council of the University of Konstanz have approved the Equal Opportunities Plan. The plan is part of the university's structural and development plan and is publicly accessible (blue box on the right, in German).
Future Institutional Strategy to Promote Equal Opportunities
In 2018, the Senate also adopted an institutional strategy to promote equal opportunities, which was developed as part of the successful application for the Professorinnenprogramm, a federal and state program to gain more female professors. It contains an analysis about the participation of female researchers as well as previous gender equality measures, targets by 2025, future focus areas and principles for the implementation of the concept. The concept is visible by a link in the blue box on the right after login.
Equal opportunities targets
For female researchers at all career levels, we have formulated equal opportunities targets to be achieved by 2025. The process is based on previous developments as well as the cascade model. To set equal opportunities targets for our professorial staff, we use a more advanced model yet: In a first step, we base our equal opportunities targets on the number of available professorships and the current nationwide figures for habilitations (post-doctoral qualification) and junior professorships. However, as soon as the requirements of the cascade model have been fulfilled, we propose a gender ratio of 50:50 for new appointments, revising our targets upwards in the process. The University of Konstanz has adopted the following equal opportunities targets for all academic career levels as well as for its bodies and committees:
Equal opportunities targets for all academic career levels (percentage of women by 2025)
Professorships (W3/2, C4/3) | 35 % |
Junior professorships (W1) | 50% |
including W1 with tenure track | 50% |
Early career research group leaders | 50% |
Post-doctoral researchers | 50% |
Doctoral researchers | 50% |
Equal opportunities targets for university bodies and committees:
By 2025 the percentage of women in university bodies and committees should reach 40 %.
Departments
Equal opportunities targets have been set for all academic career levels in our 13 departments. For an overview of these targets, please log in using the “My University” button in the top right corner. In the blue box on the right you will then find the pdf "Gleichstellungsziele der Fachbereiche", listing current and target figures for each department.
Current percentage of women
The Controlling Data Portal provides detailed staff statistics and information about the number of women working at the University of Konstanz. Starting in 2019, it will be possible to access reports about the number of women employed at all career stages for each department.
Qualitative equal opportunities targets
The University of Konstanz has developed the following equal opportunities targets to establish a gender-equitable culture of organization and research by 2025:
- We adapt and expand our recruitment and appointment strategy to raise the total number of female professors to 35 %.
- We design our human resources development measures gender-equitable in order to maintain stable percentages of women across all career levels.
- We incorporate gender equity as a criterion of quality across our organizational structures.
- We create conditions that allow our members to enjoy a healthy balance between research, studies, work and family responsibilities.
Targets 1 and 3 will be achieved by means of a gender-equitable staff recruitment strategy, target 2 will be achieved via human resources development through the Konstanzia Programme, and target 4 will be accomplished through various measures to ensure the compatibility of academic careers and family commitments.
Equal opportunities focus areas
One of our main tasks is to ensure that our staff recruitment strategy is gender-equitable. It is built on suitable instruments for recruiting female professorial staff, a gender-equitable appointments management as well as gender-equitable staffing. We will work hard to retain excellent female researchers and to prevent female researchers from dropping out of academia through the promotion of early career researchers and our human resources development strategy.
A second focus is the implementation of the Konstanzia Programme, which will help us ensure that our career and human resources development strategies across all academic status groups are gender-equitable. This programme is aimed at researchers and professors from all university departments. Three of its measures will include one-on-one mentoring: MEiN Konstanzia, Konstanzia Fellowship and Konstanzia Duo. Three further measures will serve to advance our human resources development strategy: Konstanzia Invitation, Konstanzia Transition and Konstanzia Club.
A third major focus of our work is on ensuring that our researchers are in a position to balance their studies/research/work with family responsibilities. Alongside our extensive childcare and advisory services, we focus on family-friendliness in our human resources and organizational development strategies as well as on new formats that promote work/life balance.